Structured Symbolic Storage Generation

Automated generation of structured symbolic storage

Overview

Structured symbolic storage generation is a new feature in Kontrol that automatically creates symbolic storage constants for your contracts based on their storage layout. This eliminates the need to manually specify storage slots, offsets, and widths, making symbolic testing more reliable and less error-prone.

This feature automates the manual approach described in the Symbolic Storage guide, providing a streamlined way to set up symbolic storage for your contracts without the complexity of manual slot management.

This approach has been successfully used in real-world formal verification engagements, including the Lido Dual Governance project, demonstrating its effectiveness in production environments.

How It Works

The structured symbolic storage generation feature:

Analyzes storage layout: Uses the Solidity compiler's storage layout information from the contract's JSON artifacts
Generates constants: Creates symbolic constants for each storage variable, including its type, offset, and width
Automates setup: Provides helper functions to initialize storage with symbolic values
Ensures correctness: Automatically handles slot calculations, offsets, and data widths

Prerequisites

To use structured symbolic storage generation, you need:

A Foundry project with contracts compiled with storage layout information (using extra_output = ['storageLayout'] in the foundry.toml file)
The auxiliary KontrolTest contract that is automatically inserted in the Foundry project by kontrol init

Basic Usage

Experimental Feature: Structured storage generation is an experimental feature, and dynamically-sized types like bytes of variable length, mappings, and arrays have limited support. The KontrolTest contract generated by kontrol init includes some auxiliary functions that allow setting up symbolic storage for these types manually.

Step 1: Initialize the project with KontrolTest

When you run kontrol init, it automatically generates a KontrolTest.sol contract that includes the necessary infrastructure, unless the --skip-kontrol-test option is provided. Additionally, when run in an existing Foundry project, you should provide the --skip-forge option:

kontrol init --skip-forge

This adds several auxiliary files, including the KontrolTest.sol file with helper functions like _loadData and _storeData for symbolic storage manipulation.

Step 2: Generate Storage Constants

Then, use the kontrol setup-storage command to automatically generate symbolic storage constants:

kontrol setup-storage src/SimpleStorage

This command:

Analyzes the src/SimpleStorage contract's storage layout
Generates symbolic constants for each storage variable and outputs them to the test/kontrol/storage/SimpleStorageStorageConstants.sol file

Additionally, the output file path can be customized using the --output option, and the version of Solidity used in the generated file can be customized using the --solidity-version option.

The generated files will contain symbolic constants and helper functions. Here's an example of what gets generated:

Example Contract: SimpleStorage.sol

pragma solidity 0.8.26;

contract SimpleStorage {
    uint256 public totalSupply;
    address public owner;
    
    struct User {
        uint256 id;
        address wallet;
        bool isActive;
    }
    
    User public currentUser;
    uint256[] public balances;
}

Generated Storage Constants: SimpleStorageStorageConstants.sol

pragma solidity 0.8.26;

contract SimpleStorageStorageConstants {
    // Storage slot constants
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_TOTALSUPPLY_SLOT = 0;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_TOTALSUPPLY_OFFSET = 0;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_TOTALSUPPLY_SIZE = 32;
    
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_OWNER_SLOT = 1;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_OWNER_OFFSET = 0;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_OWNER_SIZE = 20;
    
    // Struct fields (currentUser is stored starting at slot 3)
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ID_SLOT = 3;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ID_OFFSET = 0;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ID_SIZE = 32;
    
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_WALLET_SLOT = 4;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_WALLET_OFFSET = 0;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_WALLET_SIZE = 20;
    
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ISACTIVE_SLOT = 4;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ISACTIVE_OFFSET = 20;
    uint256 internal constant STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ISACTIVE_SIZE = 1;
}

Generated Setup Contract: SimpleStorageStorageSetup.sol

pragma solidity 0.8.26;

import {SimpleStorage} from "src/SimpleStorage.sol";
import {KontrolTest} from "test/kontrol/KontrolTest.sol";
import {SimpleStorageStorageConstants} from "test/kontrol/storage/SimpleStorageStorageConstants.sol";

contract SimpleStorageStorageSetup is KontrolTest {
    function simpleStorageStorageSetup(
        address _contractAddress,
        uint256 _totalSupply,
        address _owner,
        uint256 _currentUser_id,
        address _currentUser_wallet,
        bool _currentUser_isActive
    ) public {
        vm.setArbitraryStorage(_contractAddress);

        // Clear and set totalSupply
        _clearSlot(_contractAddress, SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_TOTALSUPPLY_SLOT);
        _storeData(
            _contractAddress,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_TOTALSUPPLY_SLOT,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_TOTALSUPPLY_OFFSET,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_TOTALSUPPLY_SIZE,
            _totalSupply
        );

        // Clear and set owner
        _clearSlot(_contractAddress, SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_OWNER_SLOT);
        _storeData(
            _contractAddress,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_OWNER_SLOT,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_OWNER_OFFSET,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_OWNER_SIZE,
            uint160(_owner)
        );

        // Clear and set currentUser.id
        _clearSlot(_contractAddress, SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ID_SLOT);
        _storeData(
            _contractAddress,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ID_SLOT,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ID_OFFSET,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ID_SIZE,
            _currentUser_id
        );

        // Set currentUser.wallet and isActive (packed in same slot)
        _clearSlot(_contractAddress, SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_WALLET_SLOT);
        _storeData(
            _contractAddress,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_WALLET_SLOT,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_WALLET_OFFSET,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_WALLET_SIZE,
            uint160(_currentUser_wallet)
        );
        
        _storeData(
            _contractAddress,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ISACTIVE_SLOT,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ISACTIVE_OFFSET,
            SimpleStorageStorageConstants.STORAGE_CURRENTUSER_ISACTIVE_SIZE,
            boolToUint256(_currentUser_isActive)
        );

        // TODO: Add support for the following types:
        // - uint256[] balances
    }
}

Key Features of the Generated Setup Contract:

Slot Clearing: Uses _clearSlot() to ensure clean symbolic execution states for each slot
Struct Support: Automatically decomposes structs into individual field parameters
Storage Packing: Properly handles packed storage slots (wallet and isActive from the example contract are stored in the same slot)
Type Conversions: Includes proper type conversions in the data loading functions (e.g., uint160(_owner), boolToUint256())
TODO Comments: Introduces comments to indicate unsupported types like dynamic arrays

Additionally, the user can introduce additional constraints to the generated setup contract, for example, to ensure that the totalSupply is always less than the maxSupply, using the vm.assume cheatcode.

Step 4: Use Generated Storage Setup in Tests

The generated setup contract can be used directly in your tests, for example, as follows:

import {Test, console} from "forge-std/Test.sol";
import {SimpleStorage} from "../src/SimpleStorage.sol";
import {SimpleStorageStorageSetup} from "test/kontrol/setup/SimpleStorageStorageSetup.sol";

contract SimpleStorageTest is Test, SimpleStorageStorageSetup {
    SimpleStorage public simpleStorage;

    function setUp() public {
        simpleStorage = new SimpleStorage();
    }

    function test_storage_setup(
        uint256 _totalSupply, 
        address _owner, 
        uint256 _currentUser_id, 
        address _currentUser_wallet, 
        bool _currentUser_isActive, 
        uint256 _anotherTotalSupply
    ) public {
        simpleStorageStorageSetup(
            address(simpleStorage), 
            _totalSupply, 
            _owner, 
            _currentUser_id, 
            _currentUser_wallet, 
            _currentUser_isActive
        );

        assert(simpleStorage.totalSupply() == _anotherTotalSupply);
    }
}

For test_storage_setup, kontrol prove will output the counterexample with the following path condition:

Path condition:
    #Not ( { totalSupply == anotherTotalSupply } )

indicating that the test failed because the symbolic value read from the storage slot corresponding to the totalSupply variable is not equal to the _anotherTotalSupply parameter.

The storage of the SimpleStorage contract looks like the following:

<storage>
    ?STORAGE:Map [ 0 <- KV1_totalSupply:Int ] [ 1 <- KV2_owner:Int ] [ 3 <- KV3_currentUser_id:Int ] [ 4 <- #asWord ( #buf ( 12 , KV5_currentUser_isActive:Int ) +Bytes #buf ( 20 , KV4_currentUser_wallet:Int ) ) ]
</storage>

Best Practices

1. Use Meaningful Variable Names

The generator uses the actual variable names from your contract, so use descriptive names:

contract GoodExample {
    uint256 public userBalance; // Good: descriptive name
    mapping(address => uint256) public userStakes; // Good: clear purpose
}

contract BadExample {
    uint256 public x; // Bad: unclear purpose
    mapping(address => uint256) public m; // Bad: generic name
}

2. Add Appropriate Constraints

Add assumptions constraining the values of storage variables to reduce the search space for symbolic execution, if needed:

function setupWithInvariants(address contractAddr) internal {
    setupSymbolicStorage(contractAddr);
    
    uint256 totalSupply = _loadData(contractAddr, 0, 0, 32);
    uint256 maxSupply = _loadData(contractAddr, 1, 0, 32);
    
    // Invariant: total supply cannot exceed max supply
    vm.assume(totalSupply <= maxSupply);
    
    // Invariant: max supply must be positive
    vm.assume(maxSupply > 0);
}

Symbolic Storage - Manual symbolic storage management
Counterexample Generation - Finding failing test cases

References

PreviousSymbolic Storage NextCounterexample Generation

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Overview

How It Works

Prerequisites

Basic Usage

Step 1: Initialize the project with KontrolTest

Step 2: Generate Storage Constants

Step 4: Use Generated Storage Setup in Tests

Best Practices

1. Use Meaningful Variable Names

2. Add Appropriate Constraints

Related Features

References